BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Avondale's small business district, an increasingly popular destination anchored by Avondale Brewing Co., is growing. Tomatoes. And mushrooms.

Painted Shovel Mercantile, which opened last week just up 41st Street from Avondale Park, is trying to serve the hot "urban farming" trend, offering up supplies, classes and advice on how to grow your own veggies, on beekeeping, on canning and even on keeping chickens.

In a space out back they've started tomato plants that can grow up to 25 feet up a wall and they're about to start growing their own shiitake mushrooms. Both will be sold to local markets and restaurants, said co-owner Julie Nelson.

"People want to know where their food comes from," she said.

Avondale, a gentrifying neighborhood that increasingly is attracting young families, was a natural for the store, she said. And not just because her husband Mike had room for it in the building that already houses his architecture firm.

The nearby Saw's Soul Kitchen, a recent spinoff of the popular Saw's BBQ, locally sources everything it can. And everything in the trendy new market Freshfully is from somewhere in Alabama.

Combine the rising "locavore" tide with a lousy economy that is shrinking wallets, and you've got serious demand for home-grown foods.

But be careful where you raise your chickens, Nelson said. Every municipality has its own rules. Birmingham doesn't currently allow it, she said, but you might be surprised which municipalities do.

"Mountain Brook has the most generous laws," she said. "I think it goes back to its (agricultural) roots."

This item appeared in The Insider, a weekly column in The Birmingham News